


Ceaseless Parisian Lights

by bladeCleaner



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Gen, Parisstuck, Pre-sburb Shenanigans, tarotstuck
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-03
Updated: 2012-10-03
Packaged: 2017-11-15 11:54:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,871
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/527029
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bladeCleaner/pseuds/bladeCleaner
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Where Rose is shadowed only by her own desires to be free, and her flight to France revels in illumination, tarot cards and a crazy chase scene with a newfound friend.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ceaseless Parisian Lights

The clinking of forks against plates and scraping of bowls echoes through the dining room. Her mother insists on these ridiculous ‘family dins *dinners at least once a week’, depriving Rose of the meagre comfort of at least escaping her mother’s incoherent, drunken babbling in the evenings.

She is forced to spend an hour passive-aggressively dodging her mother’s multiple inquiries into her life and imaginary school friends, instead of munching her meal upstairs while constructing a new way for Zazzerpan the Learned to petition the contempt of the wise. She has learned to regard the glass table with steel legs with well-worn scorn.

By now, the first wave of infuriating queries has passed, but they have yet to reach dessert, where undoubtedly her mother will attack the subject of romantic entanglements with as much finesse as a bull attempting a Japanese tea ceremony with a spade. Peaceful silence, however, reigns for the moment.

Or does it? Roxy Lalonde pauses in between bites and leans forward unexpectedly, lazy smile curling around her lips.

“I have some news, dear…”

Rose inhales. The bait lies before her, tantalizingly soft and luscious. Dare she masticate upon the obvious snare?

“Colour me intrigued, Mother.”

Her grin gets toothier. Rose feels the temperature in her stomach drop a few notches.

“We’re gone *going to Paris!!!” she declares.

Rose quirks an eyebrow.

“How delightful an announcement. I didn’t know you applied for a sabbatical, Mother.”

Roxy laughs, all twinkle and dry martini. “Oh, no, no nooo, Rosie, it’s not a holiday! I have a netting *meeting over there. You know how it is. We’re going for two weeks! Isn’t it exiting *exciting?”

“Truly, except I do not see why you use the frivolous ‘we’.”

She still doesn’t know what her mother does, really, but apparently she possesses an occupation that allows her to go to France for a few weeks for a meeting that will only take a few days to settle.

“Now, now, darllinngg, why wouldn’t I take you wit *with me?” her mother slurs, her alcohol-supplied hubris sliding around on her tongue. Rose resists the urge to slap her, and remains perfectly poised on her chair.

“Mother, I am suitably old enough to take care of myself while you’re gone.”

“Nonsense! You are my daughtry *daughter, and we are going to FRANCE! That is that. Who knows-” at this juncture, she winks, her drink sloshing around in her hand as she does so, and Rose stifles a derisive laugh-“you might meet a nice boy there!”

“You’ll excuse me if I find that possibility equivocal. When do we depart?”

“In two days. Park *pack light.”

 

TG: cmon lalonde sometimes you make it seem like were your only friends in this cruel apple juiceless world

TT: You mean there were other sentient beings aside from you three and my cats that could tolerate my company?

TG: haha very funny rose

TG: real kneeslapper right there

TG:

TT:

TG: please tell me you were joking

TT: Ah, if only we were not separated by continents.

TT: I apologize, Dave, but you are simply too easy a target.

TT; Of course I have had a friend other than you three.

TG: wait what who when where 

TG: you been holding out on me brolita

TT: Her name was

TT: Well, examining all the evidence and her personality, I never did think the name she gave me was her real one, but I think at least the "Maria" part of it was genuine.

Rose saves her supercilious, biting sarcasm for later. She logs onto Pesterchum and composes a sonnet about last-minute getaway trips to Paris, and hits delete a million times before she launches into a lengthy, vituperative essay about her mother’s irritating behaviour.

She tells them, as they slowly pop online, glowing colourful spheres on her computer.

John expresses envy at her getting to go to Paris, Dave consoles her, in his own, roundabout ironic way, and makes a passing remark she knew to be his code for ‘Stay safe’. Jade wished her to have “lots and lots of fun!!!!”. She chuckles afterward. Her heart is remote, a nigh-impenetrable tundra of gelidity, but her friends are four blazing fires in ice-crusted caves.

She goes to pack her things a week early, but finds that her mother has already done it in a passive aggressive fit of ‘doing things for my speshuulllll *special little girl’. She racks her brain for adequate retaliation, and re-packs her mother’s bag completely, leaving cute cursive letter notes in the small, hard-to-reach compartments.

 

She spends the entire airplane trip staring out the window. It is admittedly, her first flight out of the country. There’s an itch under her fingers she dare not acknowledge, much like a metaphorical elephant in a room somewhere. Anticipation is an anomalous feeling to her. She stares at the cirrus clouds, wondering exactly how Paris will be like.

Her mother’s booked in at a classy joint not far from the Eiffel Tower, a hotel most famous for its bartenders(of course), and she’s thankfully made sure to get separate rooms.

When they land at the airport, it’s a blur of language. Her mother, sober for once, fluently speaks 11 languages and quickly hails a cab, speaking in expert French. Rose ignores her for the most part, and soaks in the amazing architecture. She notices that everywhere-on the street, near fountains, in the darknesses of alleys-there are couples, passionately arguing or kissing. It’s a little disgusting, the profligate overflow of public displays of affection. More provoking is the way her mother gives a high-pitched giggle sometimes and pinches her cheeks, obviously hinting she should join their leagues.

She tries not to let her distaste show, and she’s mostly left in her hotel room while her mother tours the alcoholic establishments in sight. They go out for meals and she gets to see the Eiffel Tower.

It would all be tremendously more arresting if her mother was not as drunk as a rat miraculously surrounded by a lifetime supply of rum. It’s incredibly grating, trying to decipher her words and even more abrading when at some point she tries to set Rose up with a French boy providing tour services by the Louvre.

 

From that point on, Rose makes sure to ask every attractive waiter at the restaurants at which they dine whether her mother is someone they’d date. They blush, some of them even say yes, and by the end of the day Roxy has more phone numbers than she knows what to do with. Thankfully, she gets the hint, and leaves Rose some space to explore, but she’s still undeniably frustrated by her mother’s attachment to her elbow.

Eventually, after the first week, they go out less and her mother stumbles into the next room at insanely late hours.

She says that Rose shouldn’t wander out on her own without her the day that she has her ‘meeting’, but Rose plans on thoroughly exploring the city for her own.

 

She steals her key card from her mother’s possession when she’s explicitly drunker than normal, and when her mother sets off that morning, sober and clean, she dashes out with a wad of French money[‘in case of emegcies *ermergensies *emergencies, honey’], a pack full of supplies and a map.

Her first taste of fresh air without her mother is freakin’ glorious, if she can say so herself. She explores the nooks and crannies of the neighborhood, derelict contrasting with the new. She ventures into the weird and the cultural, from breathtaking churches to suspicious occult stores.

It’s then, when she’s taking a break and simply absorbing her surroundings, that she spots the fortune teller on a dim street. The cloth covering the table she’s at is threadbare and purple. The cardboard sign with black marker propped on its wood legs declares, “TAROT READINGS- PRICE NEGOTIABLE”.

Powered by sheer curiosity, Rose wanders a little further in that direction and the girl’s head jerks up immediately. She stops shuffling and gives Rose a blinding, genuine smile. She looks barely seventeen, an American with some French blood in her, brown hair cascading down her back. She’s not dressed like a gypsy, wearing a purple dress. Rose examines her appearance for some mysterious accessory on her appendages, completing the image of elusive fortune-teller much like a nose ring accompanying a goth’s bad hair job, but there is none.

“Hello,” she calls. “Would you like a reading?”

“Dare I ask what you mean by negotiable?”

“As much as you feel that I should be paid for a glimpse into the future,” the teller replies playfully, knowing her answer is vague, cryptic and irritatingly generic, mocking her own predictability.

Rose strides up to the table, taking the stool’s seat. She gives the teller a wry smirk, and passes her a single note. The teller slips it into her sleeve, and places her deck on the table. It’s violent and has an oval on the side facing upward, looking quite battered.

“Well, Rose, what would you like to know?”

“How did you-“

“Please. It’s embroidered on your pack.”

Ah, so much for that illusion. Rose awards a point to the fortune teller.

“The future, I suppose.” Rose winces internally. No shit, Sherlock.

“Alright. Do you know anything about the tarot?”

“A little. Not much.”

“Okay. Would you like me to shuffle, or would you like to give it a try?”

Rose raises her eyebrows.

“Is that conventional?”

“You’re paying me to tell you your future. You tell me, darlin’.” She grins.

Rose, on an impulse, takes the cards and shuffles. It’s a strange sensation. She seems to feel vibrations from the cards, almost as if they’re calling to her, each to each. Some murmuring louder than the others. As she shuffles, the teller says, “Okay, stop when you feel ready.”

Rose stops. Her quizzical look is quickly answered.

“Now, you can divide the deck any way you want. Select one pile, and that will be your upcoming future. Think carefully about the meaning as you choose.”

Rose divides the deck into four. She breathes in and out deeply, stretches out her mind and picks the second pile on the left. A card falls out as she does, and lands face down. Rose looks at the teller. She says, “Later,” and Rose nods.

“Now, you can turn the cards. You can turn them sideways or flip them upside down-“

“Turn it flip-ways,” Rose murmurs, and she smiles despite herself.

“Excuse me?”

“Nothing, sorry. Please continue.”

“Well, just go with your gut.”

The cards are lain out with precision.

The High Priestess. The Lovers. The World. Inversed Hermit. The Tower. Judgment. Ten of Swords. Seven of swords. Ten of wands.

As each card is lain out, Rose admittedly thinks that this is all rubbish, but the certainty of which she flips them is a little disconcerting. With each card that is added, the teller’s eyebrows shoot up. Way up.

She stops at the last card(not counting the fallen card), hesitating. She flips it over. It’s Temperance. It’s beautiful, and she traces the multi-coloured pastel wings with her fingers.

She doesn’t flip the fallen card. Not yet.

The teller’s hands clap together.

“Wow. Okay. Wow.” she says.

“What is it?”

“Nah, it’s just, there’s a lot of major arcana in this. That usually indicates that significant things are going to happen.”

“The High Priestess, she’s definitely an indication of knowledge here. You see how there’s two pillars behind her, light and dark? There will be an exchange of information in the future, and it will both be light and dark. You see the ankh and the snake? Life and danger will be intertwined, and the woman herself, perhaps you or someone you know, will have to decide what to do with the information and the danger. But you see her certainty? She will know what to do.”

“The Lovers. Most people think this is a romantic leaning, but it’s not. In older decks this was called the Choice card. See how the woman and man are joined together, but it looks uncomfortable? It’s a metaphor for choice. You either stay where you are, in familiarity, or you choose to let go and start new. It could mean a lot of things, actually, like-“

“The choice between light and darkness.”

_(Pick a side, pick any side)_

The teller nods.

“You’re going to have to make a choice. It may be a life or death situation, or even just something mundane, like deciding whether you want to do something and come out of your comfort zone.

“The World. You can see her outstretched arms, the cosmic power she’s exuding. At some point you will feel the universe in the palm of your hand. This is the card of utmost possibility and creation. The consolidation of potential. Something phenomenal will occur, and you will take part in it.

The Inversed Hermit. Isolation, by choice, but harmful isolation.

The Tower. The card of drastic change, of destruction, mostly associated with Death. You see how the lightning bolt hits the building? Something major will be obliterated. Judgment. Much like the Christian version of Judgment, there will come a day when the righteous and the wrongdoers will be judged.

Ten of swords. Bad card. Worst card in the deck, in my opinion. There will be a betrayal, or a violent undoing of sorts. You’ll be hurt, or someone close to you will be hurt, and it will hurt like a bitch. Pardon my French.” she chuckles.

“Seven of swords. Secrets. Things hidden. Weapons waiting to be utilized, potential still waiting to be realized. Ten of wands, a terrible burden. But Temperance is here, balancing it all out.”

Rose tries to take it all in.

“You’ve got one hell of an exciting future ahead of you, that’s all I can say."

“I’m trying to contain my joy,” Rose replies, caustic. She notes it all down, what she can remember. It seems too melodramatic to be at all accurate.

She’s about to flip over the fallen card when, as her mother likes to put it, all of the suddenly, a policeman appears behind a shophouse sign.

“Oy! You!”

The fortune teller’s head shoots up as if she was dodging a bullet that was meant for her chin.

“Oh, merde.”

He looks stern and is approaching quickly. She suddenly sweeps all her cards into her purple velvet pouch.

Rose views all this with interest.

“Do you own a permit? Are you allowed to be conducting business here?”

“Oh, crud. Knew I forgot something.”

“Please tell me you’re not actually telling the truth.” Rose hisses, amused and disbelieving, her eyes widening a millimeter.

“You kind of look like my accomplice right now, so my answer to that would be: RUN!”

She grips Rose’s wrist steadily, and the policeman realizes too late they’re making a getaway of it. He radios in for backup, and without any warning, Rose is being dragged along the corners of Paris.

“By the way, my name’s Maria! Maria Diatorre!” she yells, as they dodge a cop patrolling the street outside. Rose doubts that is her real name, as the cop marks it down and Maria seems not at all fazed. He’s joined by the original accuser, as well as another moustachioed man, all looking ruffled.

“ARRETER!!! _ARRETEZ IMMEDIATEMENT!!!_ ”

She yells something back in French, eyes glinting in the path of streetlights. The sun is setting on them, and Maria’s laughing and running too hard and fast for them, her brown hair turning a collage of burnished yellow and red in the fading orange light.

The police do not seem amused.

Rose, sneakers slapping on the pavement, hair tangling up in her eyes, yells over the current of wind, “English translation, mademoiselle criminal?!”

“Your mom says hi, motherfuckers!!!!!” She roars, throwing the taunt double-time over her shoulder like a cherrybomb set to explode, her eyes swelling with laughter. They’re sprinting past ancient shophouses and creating new speeds for French delinquents to conquer, circling fountains and leaping over kids playing five stone in the street. The sun has just set into its throne of dying gold and river of gorgeous purple, leaving behind the template of a light, pale blue turning into evening dark, dotted with white twinkling holes in the patchwork.

The streets glisten and shine. The city begins to light up and the roofs are baked neon. Rose hasn’t run out of breath yet and the police seem to be slowing down as they cross streets, barely missing cars and chicks on Vespas.

Maria even fulfills a life-long cliche, running into a bustling night market, jumping over a fruit cart and tumbling it’s product on the ground in the process, slowing their pursuers down with comical rotund fruit.

She throws some money at the vendor, yells, “Sorry, always wanted to do that! Chase scenes, you know-” and they can’t stop running, talking at each other and the bowl of colours above about how policemen cannot take a joke, r their whereabouts, stealing the night away as their footsteps fade into winding alleys.

Eventually, they reach a darker part of town. The whole row of homes seem to be locked up as tight as a chastity belt.

They twist and turn, Rose seemingly leading the way despite knowing Paris less than Maria. She’s on the run from police with a stranger she hardly knows in a city far away from all she’s known. The crazy hypnagogic speed of the situation seems to have lent her eyes new clarity.

_(Every corner, every road, every path seems like a swatch of rivers. You wrap yourself around the one that flows smoothest, glows brighter in your mind and pull till you’re lost in the tug that responds in turn, caught in the tempest of your lucky guessing.)_

Maria doesn’t question; simply follows her when she verves into this area or that alcove, zigzagging right behind Rose like the tail of a shooting star.

_(Tonight, the city is laid before you in laurels and light, palmed like a coin trick in your hands. You grin wicked and true and follow where your internal compass leads you.)_

Eventually, after what seems like forever and five minutes, they shake them off. They come to a stop at a fountain in a dim square, closed for some reason or another. Glimpses of the lights from over the next avenue floating on the streaming water.

_(You’re panting hard and there’s a driven stitch at your side, but you’ve never felt so fraught with life before.)_

Maria has just simply collapsed on the bench the fountain’s outer circle provides. It’s marble and predictable: a bowl in the center, protruding a stream of water that flows downwards into larger bowls of water.

She is breathing hard, lying down, one hand draped over her sternum, right knee jutting upward with her foot on the stand, left foot on the floor. She looks too casual to be the girl who just ran half a mile from the cops.

Rose joins her, head adjacent to Maria’s. They breathe deep and sweet, taking in their crazy victory.

“You do realize your talents would be better directed after some psychiatric treatment?” Rose comments, winded but calm.

“Babe, there’s not a psychiatrist that could cure me of loving trouble,” Maria replies, all smooth gangster and tumble, then laughs loudly and heartily.

 “Shit, look at me acting cool. Sorry, it does seem unreal that we got away, I’m just pretending we’re somehow in a movie and I’m dishing out lines I thought it might have. I like my adventures playing out that way. Yeah, Rose, your new buddy’s a psycho, get used to it.” she talks fast and slick. Rose is inexplicably reminded of Dave. Though her swearing jocularity reminds of Jade, too.

“It does seem eerily surreal. Do you usually taunt authority with thinly veiled aversions to your hypothetical sexual intercourse with their maternal figures and then make haste from their furious advances?”

Maria looks at her with raised eyebrows as her words get steadily larger.

“I have seriously no idea what you just said. How old are you?”

“I’m twelve.”

“You’re joking. Oh, god, you’re not. Oh my god, I swore in front of a minor! You’re not even thirteen. Oh no. Oh no I’m corrupting tweens now, that’s terrible. Rose, do not go around saying motherfucker a lot please-“

“Please get your mammary units into a refrigerated condition. I know that word exists, you did not do anything to paint a stain on my purity.”

“Alright, girlfriend. I’m chill. Crazy that you’re twelve, but I can be down with that.”

They stay silent for a while, lingering in their contemplation of the stars. Finally, Maria speaks.

“Sorry about the crazy. Tonight’s my last night in Paris. I just wanted to do something unbelievable, get rid of the antsy feeling in my gut. Guess it worked.” she laughs.

“Where are you going?” Rose asks, tilting her head slightly left.

“Norway. I won a scholarship at an art school.”

“Congratulations.”

“Thanks. Hey, what do you like anyway? I just realized, we ran a half-marathon and I don’t know a thing about you.”

Rose pauses.

“Wizards. And magic.”

“That’s cool. I think you’d be good at reading the tarot, if you ever tried. You navigated the city like a pro, your brain must be packin’ some juice. Ever been here before?”

“This is my first time here.”

Maria looks at her for a moment, and breaks out into more laughter.

“Oh my god, that’s priceless. You’ll be remembering this trip, then. Hell of a first time in Paris.”

It’s then that Rose breathes out something she wasn’t meaning to say.

“I don’t want to leave.”

Maria looks at her solemnly, weighing her up in her eyes.

“Nobody stays in one place forever. Wherever you’re coming back to, you’ll get out one day.”

“I hope so.”

Silence punctuates again, until Maria says, “God, it all seems too surreal to be happening. I’m leaving tomorrow for the school of my dreams, we just ran through the most beautiful city getting chased by pissed off police officers…you ever think how strange life is?”

Rose looks back on her life. She thinks-the freak that loves wizards and practices dark magic in the basement of her European mansion. She thinks-I’ve never met my best friends in real life. She thinks-There are no pictures of me when I was born, my father is out there somewhere and I know in my heart that the two are related. She thinks-The horizon is slipping. She’d always had a curious predilection for knowing what’s coming, but it’s all getting blurry like an image that will never fully load. She feels the apocalypse in her bones, and what’s worse is that somewhere inside she welcomes it.

The chase is alive in her still, and she sees it all in one flash, like all it did was simply pull away a veil that covered it over:

_(There is restlessness in every waking moment of your days, the songs you hear burning in your chest. You would claw out the sky to satiate your hunger, to run for your fucking life, to start somewhere new, to taste foreign free air on your tongue without ever stopping. If you could rob tonight of its seamlessness forever, lock it away, stretching, bending, amplifying it in your hands until you could live in it for an eternity, you would. Capturing this one moment in your lungs. Your final escape that would never cease._

_If you can’t have it,_

_then_

_ nobody _

_will. )_

 

“All the time.”

 

That night, she gets back home before her mother. She does not exchange emails or phone numbers as she waves goodbye to Maria in a taxi cab. She clutches a card in her fist. It’s a sketch of Maria’s in-progress tarot deck, the High Priestess.

It’s a girl by the window, surrounded by books and marked with the infinity symbol on her ankle. She raises one light and one dark needle above her head, her fingers white as snow. Her hair flows behind her and her eyes are obscured in a veil, but her smile is blinding. Behind her, the sun seems to be either rising or setting.

Rose cannot tell the difference and the last thing she asks before she departs is, “Which is it?”

Maria gives her one last smile.

“S’all up to you, Rose. Take care of yourself out there.”

Maria: a pack of cards, a marathon of Paris, a hurricane, a slamming of the car door. Her fourth friend, the fifth element.

They never see each other again.

 

She thinks about that night when she turns thirteen. December is a cruel month, April slinging her cold fingers over his shoulders, whispering her secrets of misery in his ear, of what is to come.

The land is desolate in its bareness. She mulls it over in her head as she knits a scarf.

She finds herslelf thinking constantly. About what choice she should make in the end. About

_(Good or evil Rosie)_

which to pick when it comes down to it. She had her doubts about the cards, but they seem to be ringing in her veins as the months pass. 

December is a cold month, paving the way for April. The lilacs await their chance to spring out of the earth. She shivers everyday. 

She wonders how Norway is, this time of year. She picks apart her scarf, redoing it again and again until it no longer looks lumpy. Her movements are vicious.

She can't live like this. Day after day, always the same. One day she’d get out, maybe get published or become a psychologist, live a comfortable life.

But that wasn’t enough. It would never be enough, not in a million different lifetimes.

_(This can’t be all there is)_

Get born, go to school, work, eat, have friends, watch the world go by, die.

She’s waiting. She’s always been waiting, for something to finally break her and stitch together something real with the remnants. Paris was a taste-a realization that whoever she was, Rose Lalonde was not a girl who could be satisfied with _just okay_.

 

TG: i dont get it

TT: Gasp! A Strider finding himself in the unfamiliar throes of incomprehension? What a scandal.

TG: your horseshit is as always appreciated

TG: wiping away one crystalline tear as we speak

TG: practically swimming in all the unprecedented support here of my character

TG: shit rose let a guy finish would you

TT: I apologize. Go on.

TG: almost everyone we knew died in one day

TG: we shrug like no big man we do apocalypses all the time

TG: this is a tuesday for us wednesdays we overthrow governments and recreate the economy plus make sure the milky way stays low fat and high calcium fridays we play bingo with god and his son jesus

TG: such a nice boy that jesus christ

TG: on sundays we just relax for a bit and deal with a nuclear war or two you know the deal

TG: in movies everyones screaming and their moms are fainting everywhere like hysterical dames

TG: we fall into it like a bunch of crazy doomsday preppers except without the gross grass eating shit

 

When the end of the world comes

_(Finally)_

she exhales at the first sight of fire pouring out of the horizon, like she’s been holding her breath for thirteen years.

 

TT: I would attribute it to more instinct and shock myself, rather than indifference. 

TT: Would you rather we had acted irrationally?

 

What she didn’t tell anyone about why she turned grimdark:

When she asked the ball, what came out in the end was a quiet, piercing voice, was

 

**_(you wanted this_ **

**_you wanted to be free_ **

**_you wanted her gone and then_ **

**_and then you could fly_ **

**_you asked and you got rosie)_ **

 

So when she lets go, it’s honestly a relief.

 

They’re shooting towards the green sun with a speed that’s almost supernatural, and she looks into Dave’s shades.

I guess I made my choice, she thinks. I’m so sorry.

Her idea of redemption, however, did not align with the universe’s plan.

She rises out of the green flames like a phoenix. She feels light pouring from one jar to another within her, the flapping of iridescent wings on her back. Secret, glowing paths burn in her heart, popping like a fireworks display, one after another.

They whisper to her, smooth as glass and light as feathers, not at all like the verbal bramble patch of the Ring. They sweep their white fingers into the future in one vast movement, like a crashing tidal wave of possibility, as if to say, “Atonement is yours to take, dear.”

 

She finds a pack of tarot cards in her dreams.

She picks up the purple pack and brushes the dust off the box it’s in.

She chuckles to herself, softly. She whispers, “S’all up to you,” and begins to shuffle, shifting each shimmering possibility in her fingers. She pinpoints the clearest path.

She smiles, the world glowing in her hands.

**Author's Note:**

> MARIA by Yeng Pway Ngon
> 
> Maria entwines her night with her long hair  
> sour, unripe fruit  
> swell beneath the display window  
> of the sick, depressing  
> mouse gray afternoon
> 
> slyly, in the west, the thick smoke from the other end  
> chews up the last speck of blue sky  
> Maria, the lips from the other end  
> are harvesting the bounty of your mesmerising  
> petaling moon and stars
> 
> in the orange juice in the air-con  
> in the whiff of romance between the arms  
> Maria, once-pregnant  
> Maria  
> who holds in her womb all the city's sorrows
> 
> the golden bangles, the car keys  
> all the sacred names for all the sacred coins in the church  
> every wild-dreaming bed, every entwining night  
> the tremble of every earring, the bustle of every Paris
> 
> my Maria,  
> tragic Maria, once-pregnant  
> Maria, who once lived in the New Testament  
> who will never understand  
> how the sour, unripe fruit  
> swell beneath the display window  
> of the sick, depressing  
> mouse gray afternoon
> 
>  
> 
> (original Chinese available, if wanted.)
> 
> \--
> 
> Okay, this is not at all what I had planned with this in the beginning. It was going to be a RoseDave drabble, but somehow turned into a messy clusterfuck. It's somehow a study of Rose and how she gets a crazy one-time friend from France who has a penchant for making fun of the police, AND ALSO I SNEAKED SOME LANA DEL REY IN THERE. I really enjoyed writing this, though. Especially the chase scene. 
> 
> Maria Diatorre is a fictional character. Any resemblance of living or dead persons is completely coincidental.
> 
> EDIT: Okay, I think I edited this about...six times. And now HOLY SHIT IT'S TWO THOUSAND MORE WORDS and way darker than I expected this to be. At first it was just a little fun playing around with Rose's powers, now it's just a swan dive into her nebulous depths. I did not realize I had this headcanon until I wrote this story. I went back and felt that it was insufficient, so it led to THIS. Teaches me a thing or two about posting things up only when I'm done with them. Hope you like this version better, guys.


End file.
